16 DAYS TO ‘ORANGE THE WORLD’

#PREVENT VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Today, 25th November (The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women), the 16 days of activism against gender based violence commences and will end on 10th December (Human Rights Day). The United Nations Secretary-General enjoins you and I to UNiTE to ‘orange the world’ by joining the campaign to end violence against women.

The colour orange for this year’s theme symbolizes a brighter future for women, a future without violence. We can make it possible, you and I through our concerted efforts, except of course if you believe there is nothing wrong in someone physically or mentally oppressing your mother, your sister, cousin, wife, aunt, or girl friend.

The 2015 theme is Prevent Violence against Women and I want to encourage all of us to join in this campaign against violence in any way we can, organize or join events promoting this cause, use the orange colour to make statement, discuss it with friends and colleagues, especially the vulnerable ones and even victims and the perpetrators, write about it, learn more about violence against women to be better equipped, educate someone, follow the hashtags on the social media and make meaningful contributions, speak against it, there is a lot we can do in these 16 days, you and I in order to help make our world a better place.

DO SOMETHING!

The issue is that many women are victims of gender based violence, just that very few are willing to talk about it. According to UN statistics, one in every three women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime and the say it is a pandemic of global proportions. Yet we tend to ignore it even though we can easily combat it, unlike HIV/AIDS, Ebola and other diseases.

Today, I use this medium to introduce you to this campaign and encourage you to do something. On this site, we will be dealing with different sides of violence against women over these 16 days and I urge any man/woman that has any experiences to share, whether personal or of others to please feel free to do so on this site so that others can learn from these experiences.